Did you say something BAD about me?
We often feature customer service here and the importance of getting it right – never more so than dealing with a customer complaint. Or even preventing a problem turning into a complaint… so I thought I’d share this with you…
Background
A land line went down here the other day and I was having real hassle getting through to the telecomm provider to report it.
- The recorded service I got through to (using a cable line) said it couldn’t run the test on the faulty line as it was busy… and suggested I call back…
- The form on the website accepted all the details I inputted then wouldn’t process…
- When I finally got through to a human being, English wasn’t her first language and she insisted on trying the web route again on my behalf – only to discover it wouldn’t register the fault…
I was eventually transferred to someone in the UK who manually logged the necessary information and started the process of sorting it out. From then on, I must admit in all fairness, it all happened pretty quickly.
Meanwhile, the interesting bit
Half an hour into this malarkey I was really getting hacked off, so I tweeted about it on Twitter, naming the company. Within about a further 20 minutes I had a direct tweet from its Care team inviting me to email them the info and they’d get on the case!
I did email them and thanked them for spotting my dilemma and offering to help. I also suggested they get the ‘powers that be’ at their (blue chip) company to phone in with problems/ use the website to try and solve them and see how they get on see how they like the experience.
Even when I received a follow up call the next day to check that everything was okay I still felt that they were playing catch up from a customer service viewpoint:
The competent human interaction should be there right from the first contact.
Now a question for You
What happens when a customer phones your company with a complaint?
PS: You Plc coming soon – Customer service happened to be more topical for me right now 
Linda Mattacks is the author of a series of training courses available at SellingForBusiness.co.uk developed to provide easily accessible training for small businesses who are not in a position (or may not want) to take time out to attend formal training sessions.
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